Has Twitter finally tipped? The Tipping Point refers to the idea popularised by Malcolm Gladwell in his ground-breaking mass socio-analytical 2000 book ’The Tipping Point’. Gladwell defines the Tipping Point as “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point”. It is the idea that messages and products can be as contagious as a virus, that an epidemic can be sparked by word of mouth.

Another concept outlined by Gladwell is that if these products are to tip, it will require a set of people with particularly refined social skills to start the epidemic:

‘Mavens’ are those who are constantly giving away information for free, they want to help you. In a typical Twitter tweet, ‘Mavens’ are the twitterers who scour the internet in search for messages or links which he/ she thinks his/her followers will find interesting and useful.

A ‘Connector’ (those who have a hugely ranging social network linking any and everyone), will be following the Maven, will receive the link and retweet the message. They will more than likely take the message on and offline to tell friends and acquaintances.

Of these friend and acquaintances, one is most likely to be a ‘Salesman’ (a persuader, those with exceptional skills of negotiation who can make anyone agree with them) will take that message and relay it to as many people as possible in the hope that word of mouth can take it further.

Jonathan Ross, Stephen Fry, Philip Scofield, Fearne Cotton, Britney Spears and of course, Barack Obama are just a few of the Twitter ‘Salesmen’. They are all in positions to expose the initial concept of Twitter to billions who have never heard of it. Twitter is undergoing, and will continue to undergo huge increases in traffic and new memberships.

The question is does Twitter have the ‘Stickiness Factor’? Is the concept memorable enough for people to continue using it? If more people are using Twitter, will businesses and large organisations be able to successful capitalise on this huge arena in which to spread advertising messages and potentially improve customer service?